Comfortable
by TowMondler
Summary: Chandler made a mistake, and now he looks back on his relationship with Monica


~Thanks for reviewing my last one. Please review t his one as well, it totally makes my day! This is another song fic, I know, I know, but they're really fun to write! The song is by John Mayer. Oh, and it takes place about season six~

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the song

Monica set down the bag that she had in her hands and sighed as she read the note from her roommate Rachel. She was out on a date and wouldn't be back until later. There was a knock on the door and she went to answer it. 

"Hi," she said. 

"Hi," it was her old boyfriend Chandler. They had broken up a few months earlier. 

"Do you need something?" 

"I just realized that I don't have my blue tie, and I think that I left it over here," he told her. She nodded and let him in. There was an uncomfortable silence that overcame the room. 

"Do you think that it's in my room?" Monica asked. 

"Yeah, probably," Chandler replied. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. She disappeared into the bedroom. "So Mon? How are you?" He honestly wanted to know. She had been one of his best friends, and possibly the love of his life. He had screwed up, he knew this. He knew that there was no way that she would take him back, why should she? He had hurt her, and this he knew. Also his friends weren't talking to him. They had taken her side. Also he couldn't blame them. She reappeared. 

"I'm fine," she said shortly. "Here." She handed him his tie and he took it and thanked her. 

"It was nice to see you Mon," he told her. 

"Yes," she answered. 

"Bye," he added as he walked out the door. 

"Bye," she told him and closed the door behind him. He was in the hallway and he forced himself to think of happy memories. He remembered when he had first met her. They were in their early twenties, right out of college. Actually she was still in college, but had moved into her grandmother's apartment. They had gone grocery shopping together. 

"Here's what we need," she told him dropping it into the cart. Then in a moment of spontaneity, something unusual with her, she flung herself into the cart herself. 

"Push me," she commanded and he obliged. They were going around the store laughing like crazy and he let go and she turned around and grinned at him before crashing into a display. The manager had come out and looked angry, but Monica and Chandler just laughed and ran out of the store. As they were walking down the street, she turned to him.

"Maybe I should go back and help clean it up?" She suggested. "I would hate to leave it a mess like that." That was the first time he had discovered that she hated messes, and he had laughed at her and then they recalled the look on the manager's face and started a whole new set of giggles. When they got back to their apartments, Monica poured a glass of champagne and they had talked over their secrets. 

"I had sex with my boyfriend Bobby out there last week," Monica confided. "That's my underwear on the pole." He had looked at her with surprise registering on his face. 

"Never would have guessed that you would have sex on the balcony," he told her. 

"There's a lot you don't know about me," she had told him with a mischievous grin. "So what about you?"

"Well, I don't know if I can beat that story, but I'll try," he said. "I have..." he leaned forward for effect. "A third nipple."

"You do not!" she said. 

"Here look," he had started to unbutton his shirt.

"Mr. Bing? Are you trying to seduce me?" He had laughed.

"Like I could," he told her and showed her his third nipple.

"Well, I'll be," she said grinning. Chandler stood in the middle of the hallway now and wanted desperately to go back to that day in the market. Instead, he cast a longing look at her door and then his door, where his roommate Joey had told him that he was not welcome any longer and then walked out of the building. 

__

I just remembered that time at the market

you snuck up behind me and jumped on my shopping cart

and rolled down aisle five

you looked behind you and smiled back at me

crashed into a rack full of magazines

they asked us if we could leave

When Chandler got to the apartment that he was staying in, he stuck the key in the door and walked in. 

"Is that you?" A voice called from the bedroom.

"Yeah, Tina," he called out back. Tina emerged from the room wearing a tight red dress and her blonde hair piled on top of her head. He had to think if he had ever seen her not dressed up. He forced a smile when she hugged him.

"Aren't you ready yet?" She asked. 

"One second," he promised and hurried to the bathroom and got changed. Tina looked him over and nodded her head in approval at what he was wearing and then linked her arm to his and they headed out to the party. Once they arrived, Tina insisted that Chandler get out first and take her hand and help her out. Chandler obliged and then walked into the party. He briefly remembered how he would get jealous stares when he was out with Monica. Tina may be tall and blonde, but she wasn't as pretty as Monica. She didn't have Monica's bright blue eyes, or her sparkle. Chandler still got looks from guys when out with Tina, but they didn't excite him like they had when he was with Monica. Tina squealed with delight at seeing someone she knew snapping him out of his daydream. He pulled her over there to them and they started a conversation. His friend from work was there with his wife, actually they were the ones who had introduced him to Tina. He half wanted to wring their necks, and yell at them that this was all their fault. His friend, Ted, motioned to him.

"Take a look at that girl who just walked in, I would give up everything for one night with her," Ted said. Chandler turned to see who he was talking about and was shocked to see him pointing to Monica. What was she doing here? Then he saw that her arm was linked to someone else's. A handsome, tall, well-dressed man. She looked....well, fantastic. Her dark hair was pulled half up and the rest fell a little past her shoulders curled. Her simple black dress, fit her perfect. She looked like the classic beauty. Her date helped her take off her coat and she flashed him a smile. A smile that once belonged only to him. If only he hadn't screwed it up. It was too late now. Tina grabbed his arm and pulled him to the next person. He wondered if Monica was dating that man. How long? He was jealous all of a sudden imagining her touching him and kissing him and him getting to smell her perfume and what she smelled like when she emerged from the shower. A perfect mixture of bath scents and soaps and shampoo. As Tina neared Monica and her date, he wanted to turn and run. But Tina had a tight grip on his arm and he couldn't make a run for it. Instead he found himself pulled right into the group that Monica and her date were talking to. 

"Dora! How are you?" Tina asked the woman standing to Monica's right. But Monica was focused on Chandler. They were staring at each other. Monica looked from Chandler to Tina and closed her eyes and then shook her head to get the memory out of her head. 

"This is Chris, our attorney, and his girlfriend Monica," Dora introduced. 

"Nice to meet you," Tina said shaking both their hands. She didn't recognize Monica. Chandler didn't want to interrupt and say, don't you remember darling, you've met Monica before. Remember? Of course you were half dressed at the time, but it was her. My ex-girlfriend. He looked down at his hands. 

"I'm Tina, and this is my boyfriend Chandler," Tina said to Monica and Chris. Monica nodded. 

"I have to go get some air," she told Chris and disappeared from the group. He nodded, barely noticing that she had left his side. Once she was out on the balcony she took deep breaths of air into her lungs wanting the memories to go away. She wanted to shut off her brain so that she didn't remember that September day that she had gotten off work early. She had climbed the stairs to the apartment excited because Chandler had the day off too. She had turned the handle on the door to his apartment and walked in. There they were. Making out. The woman's shirt was half off. On the couch. The groceries in her hands had dropped to the floor and she had gasped. She ran to her own apartment and found her two friends Joey and Phoebe there watching a movie.

"Hey Mon," Joey said. "What are you doing home?" He turned to look at her and saw that she was breathing in deep ragged breaths, and that she was crying. "Oh my God, Monica, what's the matter?"

"Chandler...girl...in your apartment....they were....he's cheating on me," she managed to get out before collapsing in Joey's arms. Chandler burst in a minute later and Joey had left a sobbing Monica in Phoebe's arms as he yelled at Chandler to get out. Once they were in the hallway, Joey punched him in the face. 

"You should be glad that Ross wasn't here, because he would have done a lot worse," Joey said angrily. "How could you? To Monica?" Joey waited as Chandler got up and wiped the blood from his mouth.

"Joe, let me explain," he said. 

"No, I don't want to hear it," Joey had said. "Get your stuff out of the apartment. You're not welcome there anymore." He had turned and went back into Monica's apartment where he found her still crying on the couch. Chandler had gone back into the apartment where he found Tina putting her shirt back on.

"I can't believe you!" He had yelled. "Now I lost my girlfriend and I have no place to stay. My friends all hate me." 

"You can stay with me," Tina offered. 

"You just don't get it, do you? Because you couldn't keep your hands to yourself I just lost everything that was important to me!" He had slunk onto the couch and replayed her face in his head. The hurt look, the pain, the shock that he could do that to her. He knew how it looked, and the truth was that even if it was Tina who came on to him, who had started kissing him, had taken off her shirt, he still felt guilty. He never wanted to hurt her. That was the last thing that he ever wanted to do. He worshiped the ground that she walked on. And he didn't want her to look at him with the hurt in her eyes, he couldn't stand it. So with no other choice, he packed his things up and left with Tina. Living with her was nothing like being with Monica. With Monica he felt right, it felt like it had been that way his entire life and he fit. With Tina, he felt like he was constantly making sure that she was happy. God, he missed Monica. He found her on the balcony and she stepped away from him.

"Mon?"

"Don't talk to me," she said coldly.

"You never gave me a chance to explain myself that day," he started.

"Well, you obviously are still with her," Monica said. "Tell me something, do think of me when you're with her?" She waited a minute and then said, "Never mind, I don't want to know." She spun her heel and left Chandler alone on the balcony. 

__

Can't remember 

what went wrong last September

Though I'm sure you'd remind me

if you had to

Our love was comfortable and

so broken in

Monica woke up the next morning and walked out into the kitchen. 

"How was the party?" Rachel asked. 

"Eh," Monica answered. 

"That's it?"

"Well, Chandler was there," Monica said. 

"Oh, are you okay?" 

"He was with her," Monica said tears threatening to fall. "I guess that means that I was right about them." She broke down and Rachel enveloped her in a hug and when the door opened and Ross and Joey came in, she motioned Monica to them and Joey balled his fists as he took Monica in his arms and rocked her back and forth. 

"What did he do this time?" Ross asked.

"He took her to that party I was at last night," Monica sobbed. Joey had become her support system, which had surprised everyone, they had all assumed she'd turn to Phoebe and Rachel during this. Joey was good with her though, and was comforting to her. Ross finally had enough and left the apartment and found Chandler's new address and walked to the apartment door and knocked. Chandler answered. 

"Ross?"

"I'm tired of this," he said. "She's at home, sobbing, crying over you again. You don't deserve to be cried over. And I want to know the truth. What happened that day?" Chandler seemed to be relieved to be able to tell his side of the story. 

"Okay, Tina was a friend of my friend at work. He introduced us thinking that Monica was made up, he had never met her, he just figured that I was too big of a loser to actually have a girlfriend. So he introduced me to her and she developed, I guess, a crush on me. So she showed up at the apartment that day. She took off her shirt and pinned me to the couch. That's when Monica walked in. I saw the pain on her face, and I figured that Joey was right. It would be better if I left. But I had no other place to go but here, so Tina took me in and I've been staying with her."

"Are you sleeping with her?" Ross asked. Chandler looked down. "Don't answer. How do I know that you're not lying to me?"

"Why would I lie Ross? I already lost your sister. The most important thing in the entire world to me, she's gone, what would I have to save to lie for?" Ross looked at him one more time and then nodded. 

"But you still hurt her, and she's probably never going to forgive you," Ross said. "I just needed to know the truth." Chandler nodded and watched as Ross walked out and to the cab he had waiting for him. He began to cry. He had never cried before. He had learned not to a long time before, but she was too important not to cry over. He let it all out. Then he got himself into the shower and washed his guilt away at making her cry again. When he got out he found Tina home. 

"Hi," she said brightly. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing, everything is great in my damn life. My friends think that I'm an ass and I have nothing to defend myself with," Chandler said sitting down.

"Chandler," Tina admonished. "We talked about your mouth." Chandler nodded not listening remembering Monica's dirty mouth. He had taken her to a hockey game and he had taught her all the swear words to yell at the players. She had gotten into it and the man next to her had joined in and the three of them had yelled until their voices were sore. Chandler had laughed when he thought of those words coming out of her pretty mouth. She had turned to him and grinned. When she got up to go get something to drink, the man who was sitting next to her, turned to Chandler.

"She's a keeper," he told him. "Any girl who can hold her own in a hockey game you should keep her around." Chandler had laughed and agreed. "Besides," the guy added. "She's not too bad on the eyes." Chandler was snapped back to reality and Tina was going on and on about how Chandler would come off sounded much more professional if he refrained from using those type of words. All his friends at work who had never met Monica, told him that he was the luckiest guy they had ever met. Those who had met Monica offered him their condolences. Chandler told Tina that he was going to go to the market to pick up some things and that he would be back and escaped from the apartment. He missed Monica so much that it hurt. He knew that he had kissed Tina. But at the same time he wanted to shake Monica and make her listen to him. That he never meant to hurt her, that it really wasn't his fault. Tina had kissed him, and seduced him, not the other way around. That he slept on her couch for the first month in his sweatpants, barely even looking at Tina. That when he did kiss Tina or make love to her, he thought about Monica and compared her to Monica, and so that he was always depressed when they were finished. He wanted to yell this at her, and more, but he lost the courage when he picked up the phone or was near her apartment building. 

__

I sleep with this new girl

I'm still getting used to

My friends all approve 

Say she's gonna be good for you

they throw me high fives

she's says that Bible is all that she reads

and prefers that I not use profanity

your mouth was so dirty

Monica went down to get some coffee and then stop at the store to pick up some tomatoes for dinner that night. She got to her favorite grocery store, it was owned by a very nice man who always had Coltrane or Miles Davis playing in the background. She remembered when her and Chandler had first gone in there and she had smiled and hummed to the song. 

"I love Coltrane," she had told him.

"You know who this is?" Chandler asked amazed. 

"Uh-huh," she said smiling. "My father and I would always listen to Coltrane or Miles Davis." She continued to hum to the song as she found what she was looking for and the man who owned the store, Tony, smiled at Chandler and Monica when they went to pay.

"There's my girl, how are you today?" He asked.

"I'm fantastic Tony, and you?"

"Wonderful," he answered as he looked through the items on the counter. "This is a great song." Tony turned it up a little more and Miles Davis's "It Never Entered My Mind" floated through the air. Now Monica went in there and smiled and waved at Tony, but there was a pang of pain that went through her when she heard the song. Chandler had stepped into the store and heard the song also and had to stop and listen to it. He spotted Monica towards the back, and not wanting to upset her anymore, left without buying anything and went to the other store on the block. This one didn't have Tony behind the counter playing jazz, but it also didn't contain any memories of him and Monica. When he got what he needed, he went back up to Tina. She was sitting there, like always, in a dress. He wondered if she ever just wore sweatpants around the apartment. 

"Hey," she said looking up when he came in. He suddenly had the urge to listen to Miles Davis, so he grabbed his CD and put it in. 

"Do you know who this is?" Chandler asked her. 

"I don't listen to jazz," she told him. 

"This is Miles," he told her. 

"So?"

"Miles Davis!" 

"I repeat, so?" 

"You don't like this music?"

"Not really," she told him going back to her book. It was some book that she had thought made her look intelligent by reading. She had already confessed that she didn't understand it at all. He switched to Coltrane. 

"Can you turn that Miles guy off?" She asked. 

"This isn't him," Chandler muttered but turned it off anyway. He watched Tina and thought of how everyone told him that she was perfect. She didn't clean obsessively, they had said. You always complained about that with your ex-girlfriend, they said. They just couldn't understand why Chandler couldn't just get over Monica. 

__

life of the party

and she swears that she's artsy

but you could distinguish Miles from Coltrane

Our love was comfortable and 

so broken in

She's perfect, so flawless

or so they say, hey

say, hey

Chandler laid in bed thinking of all the things that he didn't like about Tina. It was horrible, he knew, but he wanted to anyway. Obvious things like she snored, and she went to bed wearing makeup. Then there were things like she always acted like the were about to be photographed at all times. 

"Smile Chandler," she would hiss in his ear. He figured she had realized that she had made a mistake by picking him. He finally couldn't take it anymore and got out of bed and stuck on a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt and went down to the park to clear his head. It was cold and he shivered as he tightened his coat around him aware of how crazy he must have looked. Gray sweatpants, a coat, and tennis shoes sitting in the park at two in the morning. Thinking about Monica wondering what she was doing. 

"Stupid," he said to himself. "She's sleeping." But she wasn't, she was laying awake thinking of all the mistakes she had made in her life and wondering if letting Chandler go had been one. She pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt and pulled on her coat and went down to the park to think and take in some clean air. She was walking when she saw a lonely figure sitting on the bench. As she neared, she recognized him.

"Chandler?" She asked. He looked up at her.

"Monica?"

"What are you doing here at two in the morning?" She asked.

"What are you?"

"I needed some air and space to think things out," she confessed. 

"Yeah, me too," he told her. 

"I realized that I never gave you a chance to defend yourself. Joey said that you stopped by a lot that first week and no one let you in to see me," she told him.

"Yeah, they're pretty protective of you," he smiled thinking about his friends. He was upset that they were no longer speaking, but he liked that they were taking care of Monica. 

"I guess now is a good time to tell me what happened that day," she told him sitting down. He was surprised that she was going to hear him out. 

"Well..." he recalled the day to her watching her fiddle with the zipper on her coat listening to everything that he said. 

"Is that the truth?" She asked when he was finished. 

"Yes," he promised. 

"Swear?"

"Yes," he told her looking into her eyes. 

"Then why are you still with her?"

"Because, I had no where else to go," he told her. "Joey kicked me out and she offered me a place to stay. I wasn't really thinking straight anyway. I had just lost you, so I was pretty out of it. I slept on the couch."

"Are you still on the couch?" She asked and then she shook her head. "Of course you're not." 

"Monica," he took her hand in his. "I'm so sorry, I left because I figured that you would kick me out anyway and wouldn't believe me."

"You pretty much were on the money on that one," she told him. 

"I know, and I deserved it. I mean she kissed me, but I didn't stop her. And I can't tell you how sorry I am." 

"So where do we go from here?" She asked. Silence fell over them as the night sounds from the city were heard. 

"I want you back," he told her. "And I will do anything to get you back."

"Are you sure?" She asked. 

"Are you kidding? These past two months have been hell. You're the only one that I want. I don't want Tina."

"But she's blonde and tall and pretty," Monica argued. 

"Not as beautiful as you, and I'm not impressed by her at all. She doesn't have your brain, or your heart, or your laugh, or your smile. She doesn't smell like you, and she certainly doesn't cook like you. She doesn't understand me like you do and she doesn't realize that I can't love anyone but you." He waited for her reaction.

"That's quite a speech," she said softly.

"So?" He asked. 

"I think that you can come back," she told him. "But it's not going to be the same as it was before, at least not at first. It's going to take some time for me to trust you again." He nodded. "I know that you really didn't do anything, but I still have that image in my head that won't go away." He nodded again.

"Mon?" 

"Hmm?" He grinned. 

"Can I kiss you now?"

"I think so." In the moonlight, Chandler leaned forward and took her face in his hands and kissed her. It felt so good to be back in his arms, and Monica couldn't think of anywhere she would rather be. They would deal with going on forward from there, and what to say to their friends, right then was only about them. 

__

She's thinks I can't see

the smile that she's faking

and poses for pictures that aren't being taken

I loved you

gray sweat pants

no makeup

so perfect

our love was comfortable and

so broken in

She's perfect

so flawless

I'm not impressed

I want back 

~* I hope that you enjoyed and tell me what you thought. I love Chandler, so I didn't want him to actually have done it and be a jerk, and I can see him leaving to prevent Monica from pain, so that's why that was like it was. Tell me what you thought!*~ 


End file.
